The 2024 New Year’s resolutions health experts want you to make

Now that January is upon us, our New Year’s resolutions have become our reality. For many Americans, that means doing more daily to promote fitness and health.

According to a Forbes survey of 1,000 U.S. adults:

• 48% of Americans plan to focus on fitness in 2024.

• 36% on improving mental health.

• 34% want to lose weight.

• 32% want to improve their diet.

Although setting goals is a step in the right direction, actually following through with them is a more challenging task. With the average goal-setter only lasting a little more than 3.5 months, experts advise that you be realistic with your New Year’s plans.

“That could mean eating vegetables four times a week. Let’s say you want to do that for four weeks in a row. And then in one month, you might say, ‘I’m gonna reevaluate and increase the challenge,’” clinical psychologist Sabrina Romanoff told CBS News. “You can almost imagine them as like a compass, and you’re coming back to your compass. What’s really important to you.”

If you are trying to narrow your resolutions to find a plan that’s achievable all year long, health care professionals say there is one area people should focus on: cardiovascular health.

“Cardiovascular disease is the No. 1 cause of death in America,”  Dr. William Cornwell, a cardiologist at UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital, told HuffPost. “And, sadly, people ... lack a clear understanding of the health or unhealth of their hearts until something catastrophic happens, such as a heart attack or a stroke.”

Here are a few healthful ideas recommended by experts to try out, as well as tips for making your resolutions last in 2024:

Regularly exercise

Choose activities you enjoy, set realistic goals and track your progress to stay motivated. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's current health guidelines encourage “150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity and two days of muscle-strengthening activity” per week.

According to a study published in the American Heart Association Journals, regular exercise can benefit cardiovascular health in the following ways:

• Building exercise tolerance.

• Reducing body weight.

• Lowering blood pressure.

• Improving cholesterol levels.

Related

• Which diets are healthiest in national U.S. News study? And which ones fail?

• How long does it take you to get in shape when you’ve gotten out of it?

Eat a balanced diet

Like finding time to exercise, making time to cook a meal can also feel inconvenient and hard to achieve on busy days. Try to plan your meals ahead of time and meal prep so cooking at home is more achievable.

Experts encourage building a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins and healthy fats. In a study published in PubMed Central focused on the effects diets have on health, researchers found that “eating healthy will give you more energy, help you think more clearly, prevent heart disease, strokes, and diabetes, and may improve your mood.”

Researchers emphasized that “eating healthy is not about eating perfectly all the time, it is about establishing overall healthy habits that you can maintain for life.”

Get good sleep

“As a society, as families and individuals, we have not yet fully appreciated the importance of sleep,” Terry Cralle, a certified clinical sleep educator in Fairfax, Virginia, told Everyday Health. “Sleep, along with diet and exercise, constitutes the very foundation of good health.”

The CDC encourages adults to aim for seven or more hours of sleep per night and establish a consistent sleep schedule. Create a relaxing bedtime routine and make your sleep environment comfortable and conducive to rest.

“Sleep is very important,” Johanna Contreas, a member of the National Hispanic Medical Association, told HuffPost. “Sleep deprivation, we know now, is very unhealthy, and it can cause increasing cardiovascular disease” and put you at higher risk for depression and high blood pressure.